The good, the Bard and the ugly: It’s Shakespeare’s ‘Dream’ set in post-riot L.A.

The first sign that something is different-- very different--about Shakespeare Festival/LA’s production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is the graffiti on Shakespeare’s forehead.

As festival producer Benjamin Donenberg and “Dream” director Will Roberson readily acknowledge, it takes a little explaining.

“Some of our patrons got pretty upset when they took a look at the program cover and saw Shakespeare’s face tagged with graffiti,” says Roberson by telephone from Boise, Ida., where he is preparing “Scapino” for the Idaho Shakespeare Festival. “But graffiti has evolved, some of it into a genuine art form. That’s the message we’re sending from the start.”

Actually, Donenberg notes, the term graffiti is out. What’s in is Hidden Urban Literature .

Fine. But what does any of this have to do with the sylvan frolic of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”?

Everything, it turns out, because Roberson has concocted a staging of the Bard’s comic masterwork that puts us in Los Angeles 1992, after Rodney King and the unrest. This is challenge enough in the groves of Hollywood’s John Anson Ford Amphitheater, home to the show since July 8. But starting next Wednesday (through Sunday), this urbanized “Dream” moves to the South Coast Botanic Gardens in Rolling Hills Estates. (It then rolls on to the Citicorp Plaza in downtown Los Angeles, Aug. 5 to 9).

Dash the thought that Roberson is trying out some variation on “Director’s Theatre,” or a more-politically-correct- than-thou notion. After losing longtime director Kevin Kelley to New York theater, Donenberg was urged by his designer, Fred M. Duer, and others to look south to San Diego. There, Roberson has been quietly developing his skills as an assistant director and protege of the Old Globe Theatre’s artistic director, Jack O’Brien. Roberson had never directed in the Big City to the North before--one of the reasons he snatched up Donenberg’s offer.

“San Diegans have this love-hate thing with L.A.,” says Roberson, “and on the train rides up the coast, I began to examine this town in a new light. This just flowed right into the play.”

Instead of the escape of the comedy’s lovers from Athens into an actual forest and the magical domain of Titania and Oberon, Roberson’s actors flee from the homeless-filled city streets to an even more decimated section of the inner city, where the last four letters in the Hollywood sign have fallen. (A Duer joke, spelling out “WOOD.”)

“You have to remember that in the Elizabethan era of Shakespeare,” Roberson explains, “the wood was scary and dangerous, where people lacked the local militia to protect them from thieves and killers. Since the Romantic age, the wood has become a place of peace and romance. I wanted to re-instill that sense of original danger that’s in the text.”

Donenberg only half-jokes that he has warned Mimi Wilson, co-artistic director, with Bob Wright, of New Place Theatre Company (co-producer with the festival at the botanical gardens), that “this won’t be your typical, cute summer Shakespeare. It’s Shakespeare with an edge. But I trust her, since Mimi knows her community in Palos Verdes.”

Ironically, this concrete-covered “Dream” is being placed in the middle of one of Palos Verdes’ idyllic spots: A sloping open field, framed by acres of vegetation. (Audiences should bring blankets, or may rent a folding chair for $1 each.)

“I have a feeling,” says Donenberg, “that this might heighten Will’s staging all the more. But,” he adds with the kind of laugh that comes with pre-opening nerves, “I have no idea if it will work.”

So far, it has. Donenberg acknowledges that along with the festival’s gathering corporate and L.A. city support--funds that have permitted Shakespeare Festival/LA shows to be free, with a donated food item for the homeless--the stagings tended to be conservative. “Will listens to everyone, but he’s also very demanding. He’s why we’ve made a big, artistic leap this year.”

Donenberg also hopes that this will soften the blow of a charged ticket price for the shows at the botanic gardens. Since Rolling Hills Estates city government lacks both an influx of arts funding and Los Angeles’ type of cultural affairs agency, Wilson and Donenberg explain that admission had to be charged just to cover expenses.

“If this works,” Donenberg adds, “Mimi and I have some ideas for touring this show around to other garden spots, like Descanso Gardens and the Huntington Gardens. And if Rolling Hills Estates is interested in setting up some kind of arts commission, I’d be delighted to help them with that.”

What: “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

When: 8 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday (July 31 to Aug. 1 sold out).

Where: South Coast Botanic Garden, 26300 S. Crenshaw Blvd.

Admission: $10.

Information: (310) 316-3121.